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Stallman is right. What Facebook provides is a completely unoriginal set of social networking tools wrapped in a mediocre presentation layer that requires you
by 9999 15y ago
Stallman is right.
What Facebook provides is a completely unoriginal set of social networking tools wrapped in a mediocre presentation layer that requires you to surrender some of your most precious human rights in order to access it. Their users are their product. They sell you to advertisers and even more unsavory corporations like Zynga that are looking to lure you into a constant dopamine feedback loop to sucker you into buying virtual goods, so you can get that same dopamine fix faster still. Both corporations are parasites of the worst sort, because you're not only giving up your privacy, freedom, and money, you're doing so for a short term and minimal reward.
There will not be another Facebook, you can no longer be a "social network." Social networking at this point is just a common feature set that countless websites can easily replicate. In the future, social networking should just be a protocol that enables features like sharing photos, anecdotes, and relationships using a decentralized system. Bit torrent with identity. Or without identity if you so choose.
- ebiester 15y ago...easy enough that my parents can use? That doesn't introduce a cognitive load of "oh shit how do I do that again?"
- 9999 15y agoIf it's a decentralized system and it uses a free and open protocol, there could be many different clients. I am sure many of them would be very easy to use, and as far as cognitive load goes, Facebook's many capricious and poorly considered UI sea changes over the years have created countless cases of "oh shit how do I do that now?"
- crazygringo 15y ago> that requires you to surrender some of your most precious human rights in order to access it I'm genuinely curious, which human rights? I created an account, don't really use it... and don't feel like I've had any human rights taken away.
- tedunangst 15y agoThere's a distinction between having something taken and giving it freely. Facebook haters have the cognitive ability to make this distinction, but lack the integrity to do so.
- tikhonj 15y agoAd hominems never help your argument but do degrade the discussion. Please avoid them. The idea of "giving away" a right is not that simple--for example, I think there are certain rights you cannot legally waive. Even if what Facebook is doing is legal (which it probably is), this same principle can reasonably be extended to condemn what they are doing from an ethical standpoint. Additionally, Facebook does not only affect the people using it. Information about people without accounts (provided by people with accounts) is still archived and searchable, potentially by unsavory entities. For these people, a certain right to privacy is basically taken away, and certainly not given away.
- tedunangst 15y agoI'm serious. Deliberately failing to make that distinction is intellectually dishonest, and that degrades the discussion. As to your second point, Facebook is not running around taking pictures of you. Your friends are. If your privacy is being violated, it's your friends (to use the term loosely) who are doing it. Facebook provides a platform, but they are not the primary actor. That's another distinction I don't see being made frequently enough.
- 9999 15y agoPrivacy and free speech.
- mikeash 15y agoI see privacy, but how do you give up free speech?
- 15y ago